


Stumbling In

by sarahcakes613



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood Memories, M/M, Nature Magic, Nymphs & Dryads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27183727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahcakes613/pseuds/sarahcakes613
Summary: Rafael's lost faith in his life's work. When he goes for a hike and brings a bit of the woods home with him, a new opportunity knocks on his door.
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 39
Collections: Barisi Creatures Bingo





	Stumbling In

**Author's Note:**

> The fact that this story has an ending is entirely down to my bae Jillypups. Love you boo!
> 
> This fills (vaguely, but whatever) the nymph square for the creature bingo.

Rafael takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. The crisp air is a pleasant burn in his lungs, and he nods to himself as he looks around. He needs this, needs to walk until his mind is clear of all thoughts of Manhattan and work and sad eyed victims and dead eyed perps.

He’s driven out to his favourite hiking trail, taken his car out of long-term parking just for this. The parking lot is nearly empty, not a lot of people looking to hike up a mountain first thing in the morning on a weekday. It suits him, and it had felt good to wake up before the sun for a reason that didn’t involve paperwork.

Rafael jogs in place for a few minutes, warming up his muscles before he sets off. As he walks, he tries to keep his mind on the present, not letting it drift down the highway back to the city. It’s not a big park, as they go, but the primary trail is a good hour or so around a lake, and it’s more nature than a kid from the Bronx might otherwise have reason to experience.

He’d first come out here when he was only a boy, Eddie’s Tio Julio bringing him and Eddie and Alex to keep them from tearing up Eddie’s mami’s apartment one hot summer. Tio Julio had been in the army, and he knew everything there was to know about living in nature.

 _“Listen to the wind,”_ Eddie’s Tio Julio had always said, “ _let the wind tell you her story.”_ Eddie and Alex would laugh, elbowing each other to see who could get who to fall off the trail and into a bush first. Julio would just sigh and shake his head, focusing his lecture on Rafael, who listened enraptured.

He’d kept going out with Tio Julio even as Eddie and Alex had stopped, not interested in wasting their weekends on walks in the park with an old man. They mostly didn’t talk, Rafael and Julio, but walked silently, listening to the wind. When they did talk, Rafael would say things he couldn’t say in the city. He’d come out to Julio and the trees; he’d whispered his hopes for a scholarship to the old man and the water as they stood with their feet in the mud at the edge of the lake. Just as they’d listened to the wind, Julio had encouraged him to tell the wind his secrets.

Eddie had called Rafael at Harvard when Tio Julio died, but he’d been in the middle of exams and couldn’t get home for the service. He’d stopped hiking after that, there was always something more important that required his attention.

It’s been twenty years since he’s laced up a pair of ankle boots, twenty years of dress shoes and smooth pavement. His feet rediscover their rhythm as he walks, rolling easily over the rocks and roots that litter the path. It’s still early enough that the sun is casting burnished gold over everything, and the autumn colours gleam bright with dew.

His lungs protest at the altitude in a way they didn’t used to, but he pushes himself, enjoying the way his heavy breathing blends in with the sound of the birds, the sound of the leaves crunching underfoot, the sound of the water lapping at the shoreline. He stops just past the halfway point of the trail and stands on the edge of a low bluff. Julio isn’t here, but he still has secrets to tell the wind.

“I don’t know if believe in what I’m doing anymore,” he whispers. “I don’t know if I want to keep fighting a broken system.”

The wind doesn’t reply, but he closes his eyes and basks in the cool susurration of it washing over his face.

As he continues his walk, he notices signs of an early winter peeking through. Frost on the piles of fallen rotted leaves, cracked branches drooping from the rainstorms that batter at the wood until it breaks. He sees one long branch lying nearly across the trail, attached to a tree only by a few faint curls of bark.

It’s a sturdy piece of wood, a bit over four feet long, and bark hangs off it in tendrils. It has a pleasing sinuous curve to it and Rafael thinks it would make an excellent walking stick.

Another of Tio Julio’s gems of wisdom had been about carving wood. _“Let the wood tell you what it wants to be,”_ he would say, his pocketknife flashing as he whittled. “ _She’ll take her shape; you just need to follow her lead._ ”

Looking at this branch, Rafael imagines it is telling him it wants to come home with him. He pulls that same worn pocketknife from his coat and makes short work of the few woody strings that still connect branch to tree, and then slivers off the bits of hanging bark. It’s got a perfectly knobby bit on one end that he can polish into a grip, and it’s thick enough that it feels sturdy, but not so much that it feels unwieldy.

He walks the second half of the trail with the branch in his hand and by the time he’s back at the parking lot, he imagines it has molded perfectly to the shape of his palm where he grips it. He lays it across a towel in the trunk of his car and drives back into the city.

As he sips the now-cold coffee from his travel mug, he thinks about the day ahead. He’s taken a rare day off and he is torn between wanting to waste it doing absolutely nothing and wanting to treat himself to every luxury he doesn’t normally have time for.

Either way, breakfast is the first order, and he stops at a roadside stall to buy fresh eggs and fragrant green onions, thinking he might put together a nice omelet when he gets home. When he gets back to his car, he blinks at the sight of his new walking stick in his back seat. He peers closely and notices the flap between the seat and the trunk is down. It must have rolled through the opening when he was coming down a hill and he just didn’t notice.

The parking garage he uses is only a few convenient blocks from his apartment, so he returns his car there and walks home, stick in one hand and bag of produce swinging from the other one. When he gets home, he sets the stick against the back of the sofa and walks into the kitchen to make his omelet.

He is just sitting down to eat when there’s a thumping knock on his door. He looks at his phone but there are no missed notifications from Carmen or Liv that would indicate someone running over for any reason. The knock comes again and he shoves away from the table with a grumble.

Peering through the peephole doesn’t give him much, all he can see is someone’s neckline, an unbuttoned Henley collar. The person moves back then and he sees a tall young man. He doesn’t recognize him, and wonders if maybe one of his neighbours had made the mistake of bringing someone home last night and now this man is…what, trying to remember which apartment he’d come from? He shakes his head, that doesn’t make any sense.

He opens the door and eyes the man.

“Can I help you?”

The man stares at him, his eyes wide.

“You!” He exclaims, pointing his finger at Rafael.

Rafael looks carefully at him. He doesn’t look intoxicated, but there’s something wild in his eyes, and Rafael looks behind him, trying to decide just how far his phone is if he needs to run for it.

The man pushes at the door and walks right past Rafael into his apartment.

“Excuse me?” Rafael splutters. “You can’t just walk into my home!”

“You did it to me,” the man mutters, looking around. “Waltzed right in and took a piece of me with not so much as an ‘if you please’.”

He spies the walking stick leaning up against the couch and crows, rushing over to it and picking it up, inspecting it as if checking for injury.

“Did you – were you following me all the way home?!” Rafael asks, frightened at the thought.

The man shoots him a disgusted look. “I was tracking my branch. You just happen to be here.”

“Your – I found it, that makes it mine.” Rafael’s not really sure why he’s arguing with what is without doubt a madman standing in his living room.

“Oh, is that how it works?” The man huffs and picks up a lumpy clay vase that is sitting on a shelf. “I found this, so I’ll just take it with me.”

“That’s not – that’s hardly – I found that branch outside. In a public park. This is my home.” Rafael still doesn’t know why he’s even entertaining the complete absurdity of this situation.

The man whirls around and points his finger at Rafael again. “Exactly! Home! You don’t take things you find in someone’s home!”

“The park is your…home?” Rafael asks slowly. Maybe this man has been living rough, and he’s about to be attacked by a mountain man who’s been away from civilization for his entire life. He doesn’t look like a man who’s been sleeping rough though, his clothing is simple but it’s clean. His hair is a messy bed of curls but it looks clean as well, if maybe in need of a conditioning treatment.

The man rolls his eyes. “I mean, in an extremely crude human imagining of the metaphysical nature of home being a place one inhabits, sure, the park is my home.” He waves the branch around. “And this is a piece of it.”

Rafael’s morning has gone from peaceful to downright confusing.

“Okay, look, I still have no idea who you are or how you found me, but if the stick means that much to you, by all means, take it back. Be very happy together. Vaya con Dios.” He waves towards the still open front door.

The man looks ignores him, looking around. He’s put down the clay vase, but his hands keep touching other things, fingering the spines of books and picking things up to inspect them. His eyes brighten when he sees the small display of carved items Rafael has, things he’s worked on over the years when he’s needed something to do with his hands.

Rafael watches the man as he inspects each item, picking them up and putting them down. He holds some of them up to his ear, as if they were shells to hear the ocean. Whatever he’s hearing seems to please him, and he looks back at Rafael, a small smile toying on his lips.

“Would it be possible to get a glass of water?” He asks, and Rafael’s mouth drops open in surprise.

“I beg your pardon?!” Rafael says. “Would you like a snack, as well? Maybe a warm cloth for your face? You can’t just, just, _walk into people’s homes and demand things of them_!” He lets out the breath he’d been holding while he ranted.

“I didn’t demand,” the man says, frowning. “I asked. You’re permitted to say no.”

“Oh, _thanks_.” Rafael says sarcastically. He stalks into the kitchen and sets a mug under the running tap. He’ll give the man a drink, but he’s hardly going to crack into his refrigerated sparkling water for a perfect stranger.

He turns around and startles, the mug flying up and splashing water over his hand. The man is standing right behind him, that small smile back on his face.

“Don’t do that!” Rafael says, shoving the mug at the man.

The man takes the water and dips a finger in it. He brings the finger to his mouth and sucks at the beads of moisture. Rafael licks his lips unconsciously. They stand there suspended for a moment, the man’s eyes on Rafael’s and Rafael’s on the man’s mouth.

A sound comes from the living room, like trees bowing under the weight of snow, and the moment is broken as the man’s attention is diverted. He rushes back to the other room, Rafael following behind him. A look at the stove clock tells him that this entire dreamlike moment has not even taken up twenty minutes of his morning.

“Oh!” Rafael nearly walks into the man, who has stopped and is standing still, staring at the branch. Rafael stares too, because the smooth branch he’d brought home is now blooming, tendrils sprouting out all over with small green curls of leaf and tight blossom buds.

The man squats next to the branch, runs his hand along the length without actually touching it. “Are you sure?” He says, and Rafael opens his mouth before closing it, because he’s pretty certain the question wasn’t actually for him.

He stands, brushing his hands on his jeans. “What’s your name?” He asks Rafael.

“Rafael,” he says, and then because it’s only fair, “what’s yours?”

“You can call me Sonny.” He says absently. Well, Rafael thinks he says Sonny. What he actually says sounds more like an assortment of sibilant rustles and creaks, but it definitely began with an S, and Rafael’s pretty sure there was at least one N in there.

“Rafael,” Sonny repeats. “God heals. Are you a healer?”

“I’m a prosecutor.” Rafael says. “I don’t know how much healing we do.”

Sonny dips his fingers into the mug of water again and flicks a few drops on the branch, where the tight buds are starting to slowly open up.

“You ever think about doing something else?”

“No,” Rafael answers honestly. “I don’t know what else I would do.”

Sonny sets the mug down and turns to face Rafael. “Would you like to find out?”

“Are you about to offer me two pills?” Rafael says, only sort of joking. The way this is going, it wouldn’t surprise him.

“No?” Sonny’s face twists in confusion. “I’m going to offer you a job.”

Now it’s Rafael’s face that scrunches up. “You don’t even know me.”

Sonny shrugs. “The system chose you. You’re a natural caretaker.”

Rafael has no idea what the system is, and he’s still at least three-quarters certain Sonny is actually a complete hallucination brought on by career burnout. There’s no other logical explanation for why a man would appear in his home and start talking about the park and trees and systems and offering him a job doing – what? Looking after branches?

And more importantly, is Rafael considering it? He hadn’t lied, he’s never in his life thought about being anything other than a lawyer. He feels the weight of Tio Julio’s knife in his pocket. Is this the wind giving him a message?

“I don’t suppose you have a contract I could look over?” Rafael jokes weakly.

Sonny moves closer to him. “We don’t seal our contracts on paper,” he says heatedly.

“Handshake then?” Rafael is pretty sure that’s not it either and he’s right, because Sonny shakes his head.

He leans down and presses dry lips against Rafael’s. He tastes like spruce, or birch, something sharp and piney.

There is no sudden tilt to the earth, no sudden burst of rain to signify a great shifting in the universe, but Rafael feels something settling inside him, some serenity that he’s never felt before.

There will be questions, he knows, and they will need answers, but they can wait. Right now, he’s just going to listen to the wind.

**Author's Note:**

> I really need to stop writing stories where characters don't know each other's names ahead of time so I don't have to keep saying "the man".
> 
> I hope this goes without saying, but when you go for a walk in the woods, respect the delicate nature of the biosphere. Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints. The system thanks you.
> 
> Also, now I want a spruce beer.


End file.
